About 1 in 5 texts on my Samsung Gusto 3 arrive in scrambled unreadable characters which look like ascii extended character set. This happens randomly, from friends with Verizon and non-Verizon service providers, and all brands of phone, smart or flip. If I get 5 emails from the same person, from the same carrier, one will be scrambled. If I have the failed text resent from the originator it will again be non-readable. As such, the problem is consistently repeatable. I've talked with Verizon support who sent me directly to Samsung. Samsung level 2 support reinstalled the latest software level which had no effect.
By Googling this problem, it has been around for about 10 years with all makes of phones and all carriers. But I cannot find what the solution is. I think it has something to do with the way SMS service is set up at Verizon (SMS vs MMS, or possibly UTF-8/ascii settings) but I don't know enough to be able to talk intelligently about this.
Anyone out there have any ideas? Thank you very much.
I rely on my text messages daily, so I know how important it is to ensure they are working correctly. When did you start experiencing difficulties with receiving garbled text messages? Do you notice garbled text messages received only when a text is over 160 characters? Has there been any changes made to the phone when this started?
Thank You,
MichelleS_VZW
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I have always had occasional garbled messages with this phone and Verizon
for over a year. The test gargled message that I use to see if it repaired
is 98 characters including spaces. The message has no emojis, pictures, or
audio. It is a basic text message with no punctuation other than periods.
I will send you the exact message if you want to look at it. When I look
at the "message info" on the Gusto 3, the size of the messages is 0.3 - 0.5
KB which I think is probably ok. And the text type was "txt", not "mms".
I sent a text message to myself using Verizon .VTEXT and email which was
over 300 characters and received a truncated message of 160 characters in
readable format. Length of message does not seem to be the problem.
Please ask me more questions. Thank you.
On Sun, Nov 12, 2017 at 2:28 PM, vzw_customer_support <
I appreciate all the added details stephenrodgers. Text messaging is my main means of communication, so I understand the importance of making sure it is working properly.
I researched this further and did not find it to be a known issue with the Samsung Gusto 3. There are many factors that can cause the garbled text messages. You can visit http://vz.to/2A4pHdn for troubleshooting steps you can take to make sure everything on your phone is working properly.
Please keep us posted if you continue to receive the garbled text after you have gone through the troubleshooting steps.
JohnB_VZW
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If my response answered your question please click the "Correct Answer" button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!
Hello JohnB,
Thank you for your continued support.
When I select the link that you sent me for troubleshooting I get a Verizon
screen that says "An unexpected error has occurred".
No, texting is not repaired yet. When your attached troubleshooting link
works I will try the Samsung troubleshooting recommendations. I think I've
already tried them though via the Verizon Samsung Gusto 3 support page
having previously tried everything I could find on your site to resolve
this myself. I don't think the problem is with the Samsung Gusto 3 as
Samsung support reinstalled the latest version operating system with no
changes. I can send you some Verizon blog links going back about 7 years
that talk about this problem if it will help. It is not a new, nor
unknown, problem though I've never seen what fix is required.
By the way, at least one of my sources of failed texts is from a friend who
has Verizon service using a Verizon Apple Iphone. This probably means that
the error in not out of the Verizon network. We can retest this whenever
you want. But I think you need to be looking at the Verizon network
settings rather than the Samsung Gusto 3 settings. Somewhere the network,
and possibly not the phone, is deciding to transport and/or display ASCII
characters rather than alphabet characters. Is this function in the phone,
or the network? I don't know. Blogs that I have read discuss this issue
on many brands of phones, both smart and basic flip, which makes me
suspicious of a network rather than a phone issue.
Would a picture of the scrambled screen text, plus a copy of the original
alphabet text, help you to determine the location of the problem? Also,
this is not a problem that has recently occurred. It has been this way
since the purchase of the phone and service so nothing has suddenly changed.
We need to keep working on this. Someone in Verizon is familiar with this
problem and knows the solution. It is OK to pass this issue to the next
higher level of Verizon technical support if you think it would help. If
not, I will readily try anything that you recommend.
Thank you.
On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 9:49 AM, vzw_customer_support <
I've had the exact same problem with my Verizon/Samsung flip phone for a few years, and it seems to have been getting more frequent over the last couple of months. After some experimenting, I discovered that the problem almost always is the result of the incoming text containing an apostrophe ('), an ampersand (&) or an emoji.
1Waye - thank you for responding. I checked the original text and it did
have one apostrophe, but no ampersand or emoji. I will try a test w/wo the
apostrophe and see what happens. In receiving a text with no words, and
only the simplest of emoji's, I receive a simple punctuation period (.) in
the emoji's place. Not sure what that is telling me.
I would be happy if I simply received all texts in alphabet characters
without emojis, video, pictures, or even putuation. Readable content is
critical.
Have you had any progress with Verizon in resolving the problem?
I also get a period (.) or two (..) when people send me simple emojis. These problems have not been solved, despite calls to Verizon customer service. I suspect that since flip-phone users represent a small percentage of Verizon's customer base, and a lower-profit percentage as well (no data plans), there is little incentive for Verizon to commit resources to solving this. I've been able to get most of the scrambled messages by asking friends and relatives to resend them without the malfunctioning punctuation, but this is frustrating for both parties.
Same here; I started getting the occassional scrambed message about 2 years ago, but it was rare. Now, however, it's been happening with increased frequency, particularly in the last few months. For example, if my wife sends me 5 random text messages, 3-4 will be scrambled. At first it only happened when I received text from her, but now, in the last week or so, I've started getting scrambed messages from everyone.
There's a real problem here!
I have this issue also. It's been ongoing for a couple years, but previously it was only a rare occurrence, so I didn't pay much attention to it. However, it happens very frequently now. In fact, out of 10 texts, approximately half will be scrambled, unreadable...and it doesn't matter who sends it, the device, the carrier or the content (i.e. punctuation or not, symbols or no symbols, it doesn't matter).
It's getting to the point where the text function on my Gusto is, at the least, inconvenient, and as the problem worsens it will soon render the text function worthless.
I've seen similar discussion online dating back to 2010, so this problem has been around for a LONG time.
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